Mark Evans of Bancroft Research Group joined me for a candid discussion about current trends, marketing and his triplets. Whew! The kids could have taken the whole show but we opted to discuss more social networking and what he’s doing with the SFAMA. (San Francisco American Marketing Association)

Mark hosted an event the day after our recording with guests, Mark Silva, Jeremiah Owyang, Robert Scoble and Kevin Marks. Mark knows the industry and can draw a great conversation out of anyone.

A bit about Mark Evans:
For executives and investors, managers of Fortune 500 companies and other clients requiring expert assistance with competitive research in the financial services and high-tech industries, Mark Evans brings a wealth of experience.

For more than 10 years, he has earned a reputation for providing skilled and practical guidance as a market researcher and analyst, consultant, and entrepreneur.

Read more here.

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I’m very pleased to announce that I’ve joined eComm, the industry leading conference as Director of Conversations & Marketing. As a part of my role, I’ll also be writing on the eComm blog and driving conversations in the eComm Facebook group, and across all the social media avenues. Conversation and engagement are so critical to Sheryl and I , and I’m thrilled to be at the center of the eComm excitement.

This morning Lee Dryburgh and I chatted for a bit on the phone, and there’s a podcast of our chat enclosed in his post below.

Ken Camp Joins the eComm Mission
By Lee S Dryburgh

I’m pleased to announce that Ken Camp has joined the mission! Many of you in the community will already know Ken.

Ken comes aboard as the Director of Conversation & Marketing. He will be building out and supporting the growing community as well as helping engage bloggers, press and media partners (amongst many other things).

Today we held our first post-appointment call - the audio is here. It’s worth a listen as it gives some insight into the eComm mission (34 minutes in length, 24 meg in size).

I hope that the community both appreciates and supports Ken in his new role! He is there for you.

Steven Weathers is a multi-media dynamo, American in China TV Star, an Official Foreign Expert, and an amazingly bright man with a background and education in marketing. Steven lives in Shanghai, China, but hails from South Carolina. A man with a 5 year plan, who wouldn’t share it, Steven can and will introduce you to a wealth of knowledge about a country that is frequently difficult to really understand unless you know someone there.

Steven Weathers bio:
Steven Weathers (???) is the founder for American English Circle and producer and host of Foreigner Perspective. He is also the television host of International Channel Shanghai’s (ICS) City Finder: Special Edition.

Read more here here.

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Calliflower from iotum announced the the expansion of the international dial-in network for their premium service. It is now available for conference calling and document sharing in 30 countries around the globe. Calliflower now offers a flat-rate conference calling from over 100 cities world wide! This is quite an expansion and a huge value for the global business. With their flat-rate international calls, many customers can see a savings of up to 90%. This is potentially huge for any business.

Here’s a link to what the real costs of free conference call services may be, and just how Calliflower saves you money.

iotum is a Voice 2.0 company that aims to reinvent business conversations and shape a world of relevant communications where devices, social networks and Web services work seamlessly together to let people communicate with whom they want, when they want and on the device they want.

We highly recommend Califlower for professionals looking for a program that is great quality, offers superb value and saves YOU money. There is really no better collaboration tool on the market, especially not at their price point.

Press Release for Calliflower.

The other day we took some time to watch a presentation Clay Shirky gave to the State Department discussing cell phones, social medai, and the impact they had on the world of today.

In talking about all the changes in the world with each other, Sheryl noted that the biggest change we’re faced with today is that with the Internet as our media, providing both conversation and groups, where everyone is a producer who adds to the worlwide information conversation, we have achieved global accountability.

A few years ago, those of us actively involved online heard the phrase “we can fact check your ass.” Those days are gone. We don’t have to do anything today but participate in the conversation. Governments everywhere are accountable. Their actions are on display for the entire world to see. Businesses are accountable to more than shareholders. The information is out there and can be stopped.

Global accountability will reshape how nations are governed and how businesses are run. There isn’t a single source vetting information any more. And we can never go back.

We went live on ustream.tv and dug further into our thoughts. Here’s the recorded video.

Free TV : Ustream

Today Dameon Welch-Abernathy, aka PhoneBoy joined me to talk about his recent transition from Nokia to Check Point. Dameon has done some work for Check Point though he is quick to point out he never actually worked for them.

Dameon is a security guy, but he’s so much more. An affable man I never tire of talking with, Dameon brings a wealth of knowledge as well as fresh ideas to every conversation.

In this Incidental Interview while the intent was to talk a bit more about his new role with Check Point, we digressed to the early days of the web, and how could a security person not discuss, at some point, the king of security, Steve Gibson.

I believe your glimpse into the personal side of PhoneBoy will be unique and thoughtful. Dameon is a great friend of mine and well worth paying attention to.

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This post is inspired by two things I’ve read this evening. I encourage you to read them for yourself.

First, my good friend Dameon wrote What Is The Secret of Social Networking?

The second piece is by Dean Power entitled The Moment You Believe, In Social Media. I stumbled across it on FriendFeed.

I’m not going to quote them or excerpt from either. I’m simply saying you should read them both. Dean’s piece included a moving video entitled The Message, which I am embedding here.

The message is powerful, clear and true.

This started about three hours ago, but due to some server issues, we’re just now getting this post set.

Actually, with your help we can build TWO schools in July: 1 in Kenya, 1 in Ethiopia (and I’ll do a live videocast by satellite from the worksites, that everyone who donates can watch!)

We’ll raise this money together, $10 at a time.

ETHIOPIA

Meet Yawala, a teacher in the poor eastern village of Hruso, of the Somali tribe.

Yawala and her students currently don’t have a school building. We can change that this summer.

With a population of 1,800 the people of Hruso are not Somali pirates but Somali farmers. But in drought-ridden east Africa they’re struggling to grow enough food to feed their families.

It’s great to see more support for our friend Drew Olanoff. Now FreeCreditReports.com has joined the fight. They’ll contribute $1 for every new fan on Facebook until they’ve contributed either $10,000 or June 23rd. That’s one week, so go sing up and help collect a dollar for the fight against cancer.

The 48hr online party! begins TOMORROW to raise the capital for TWO African schools we’ll build in July: 1 in Kenya, 1 in Ethiopia.

Last time we raised over $10,000… $10 at a time.
This time we’re shooting for $15,000 (it’ll pay for for both schools).

It’s noon Wed the 17th - noon Friday the 19th.
Here’s the link:
www.BuildAnAfricanSchool.org

Spread the word, and please help if you can!

I was pointed toward 2 very interesting posts this morning. They are very different but both started a thought process I felt compelled to put down here. The first one titled: Docs Are Old-School, We Need PageRank For People comes from threeminds, a website that describes itself as ‘covering digital marketing since 2005′.

This article says:

I’m going to let you in on the Search industry’s dirty secret…

Google is slipping.

Google’s big innovation was in realizing that a link to content is the same as a vote. By tracking all the links pointing to a page of content Google assesses how influential that page is - its reputation. Google calls this ‘PageRank’ and it’s old tech.

PageRank assigns a reputation score to the URL where content is published. This makes it a great fit for content that stays put in one location. However, evolving content distribution via blogs, RSS, guest columns, and syndication are a challenge for PageRank. Tweets, retweets, micropublishing, ratings, and comments - even bigger problems.

The solution lies in associating reputation with the identity of the author - a PageRank for People.

Reputation is Personal
At issue is how Google attributes reputation.

If marketing guru Seth Godin publishes an article on NYT.com, marketing wonks want to read it. If he publishes it instead at PodunkMarketingBlog.net, they still want to read it, because hey - it’s Seth Godin. Google would rank the article at NYT highly, but Seth’s work would be next to invisible when published at Podunk.

We assign reputation to people; experts, advisors, consultants, coaches, gurus, friends, etc. Search engines to date have relied on some proxy for this real-world reputation.

Content Lives Everywhere
In the physical world, your reputation follows you. If you’re the world’s foremost expert on AJAX, your opinion on the topic will be respected wherever you go. Imagine if the same held true online. Publish an article on an obscure web dev blog, it ranks highly, because hey - you’re an expert. Pen a guest column on “AJAX and You” for Women’s Day magazine and it ranks great, because you’re the best in your field. Post a comment on the blog of an up-and-coming developer and that post gets a boost, because one of the luminaries in the industry judged it worth weighing in on. These are just a few of the possibilities, I’m sure there are plenty more.

Mapping reputation to people instead of URLs makes PageRank portable. It’s PageRank for people.

The rest of the story is here.

I don’t disagree with this article, mostly, but I don’t think even with a pagerank for people it’s possible to tell the truth about who the real innovators of content are, the truly smart minds or the people we should be paying attention to.

Why am I going out on this limb that seems at this point to be fairly unsupported? Well, it’s not truly unsupported. Let’s look at the realities.

How many people would you say are ‘leaders’ in the tech industry? Who do we consider to be the top dogs, so to speak? A very small percentage of people. The people like Dave Winer, Seth Godin, Leo Laporte, Mike Arrington and even Robert Scoble. Of course there are others and every group will push it’s own to the top, but there are some names that across the board are somewhat recognized as tech leaders.

My question is this, what makes you so sure they know more than you? Because you recognize their names? I’ve come to my own conclusions and you can agree or disagree. You know what? It doesn’t matter what you think for me in this instance. This is my perception and my voice is small so many will not even see this post. In fact, I’ll go back on that limb and say if we’re talking numbers, my post will be read by less than 1/2 of 1 percent of all people reading content on the web. I have numbers that back that up. They’re in places like technorati. You know the ones I’m talking about.

Here’s what I think. I think the real innovators are not well known. I think the people we all pay attention to are very good at something, though. They are exceptionally good at stating the obvious and finding a market that pays attention to them to create a buzz. Ask yourself this, though, when was the last time you read something from one of these people saying something you hadn’t thought of yourself? How many times have you simply retweeted what they said because you thought you’d get paid attention to more because you’re quoting, in essence, what a big name said even though you may have written it yourself before you saw it from them, or thought it before you saw it from them, you retweeted them.

Dave Winer states the obvious. He’s really good at this. I would say it is one of his best things. Do I know that for a fact? No. And I don’t care what his numbers are. What I care about is the simple fact he is paid attention to far more than so many others for saying what others can and do say. Why? Because people know him and view him as a ‘leader’. What makes him more valuable? What makes his content innovative? It doesn’t matter though because he is paid attention to and in the end, that’s all that matters. Numbers and marketing.

Now, let’s go to the next article I saw this morning. Why Twitter Follower Counts Mean Nothing This was written on the Social Media Marketing Institute.

Their article starts:

Getting followers is easy. Building a community is hard.

I created two fake Twitter accounts.

@jwmont and @holachick are not real. Furthermore, 99% of their tweets were randomly generated.

I set both of these accounts up last Thursday. It took all of about 30 minutes to make up profile information and populate Twitterfeed.com with the RSS feeds that generated the random tweets to their accounts. @jwmont was set up to focus on iPhone twitter search results and @holachick was set up to focus on affiliate marketing twitter search results.

So, how did I get several thousand people to follow accounts that were simply a string of randomly generated status updates in less than a week?

Simple: I followed the followers of one (and only one) affiliate marketer who is using automated techniques to attract people to his particular version of snake oil. I did this manually on the first day. That resulted in just under 300 followers in less than 12 hours. So, I know it’s possible to achieve these results manually. I don’t have that kind of time. So, on the second day, Zeek Interactive wrote a script for me that automatically followed 100 of his followers every hour. That script is still running.

I also used Twengager to automatically find and follow anyone using the keywords “@mrtweet,” “affiliate,” “http://www.twiveaway.com,” and “twellow.” I chose those keywords because of the high probability that anyone using them would automatically follow the accounts back. Then, I deleted any of the accounts I followed who had not followed me back with 12-24 hours using Huitter.com. It’s that simple. No interaction. Very little time taken away from my day. Painless. Easy. And it worked just as I thought it would.

The rest of this story is here. Please read it. I think it’s important.

What this represents is how we devalue ourselves, and others in seeking numbers that are ubiquitous and ultimately matter little.

Start with your network. We all build them, be they large or small. I’m going to start throwing numbers out, they may or may not be substantiated but they are my numbers and accurate to the best of my knowledge.

If you follow in your ‘network’ 100 people or less, how many people in your network do you know something about? If I were to look at your following list, not your followers but those you follow, and randomly go through it asking you questions about each of them, how many of them could you tell me something about? And if you follow 1000 people, what do you think happens to that list? And what if you follow 10000 people? Or 100000 people?

If you follow 100 people, you likely remember a little something about each person you follow. At 1000 that percentage drops significantly. At 10000 it is now a small fraction of people you could quote a piece of information about without a bio in front of you - and at 50-100k that number drops exponentially. 

Once we reach a certain level of following we have become preachers. We are no longer truly engaged no matter what we fool ourselves into believing. Oh sure, we may have said hello to each of our followees but we have not shared real conversation or had reciprocal communication with all of them. What we have done is become a mouthpiece telling our ‘network’ on a collective basis something we want to share or want to inspire them with. We are no longer communicating on a personal level but engaged in something quite different. We are delusional if we think we matter to those people. Just as the post above describes, at some point we no longer matter on any level but are simply a constant in a stream of unconsciousness. Other peoples unconsciousness. The level at which we can truly engage and be engaged is so minimal as to be unimportant. If you change your picture no one notices. If you stop tweeting, no one pays attention.

Just this morning a new follower of mine stated in her stream, I no longer pay attention to DM’s on twitter because I get so many spam messages I simply ignore the whole thing. I’ve heard that same statement by a number of people I care very much about who believe, truly believe there is value in a large network. Well there is, if all you want to do is be retweeted and be heard. But I want more. Another friend of mine said last night. I want it all, and I agree with him. So do I.

I want every person in my network to know they count to me. Not just because I spew to the crowd that they matter, but because I’ve had the time to personally touch base with them and see how they are. I want them to know they are valuable to me and not just another face in a very large crowd. And something else, I can honestly say to you my loyal readers, hehe, that if someone asked me to tell them something about each of the people I follow on twitter, I would be able to say something about you all. I tested myself. I may not know every little detail of your lives but I pay attention. Following only 378 people it’s not difficult. Following unfathomable numbers would make that impossible no matter how delusional you are.

I think what I’d like people to do is stop misrepresenting themselves, and stop trying to sound as though things matter that don’t. I live what I talk about. I believe with every fiber of my being that a community is important. With tons of people to follow I would no longer be able to answer DM’s just like that woman this morning. I’ve heard it time and again by people I really value and care about. They can’t use twitter the way they did in the beginning. They are frustrated that messages get lost. They are swamped by sheer volume of DM’s and emails. Why? Because they want numbers! With numbers personal is no longer possible to about 90-99% of the time. The bigger your follow list, the less percentage of time you devote to each person. That’s just a fact. 

I answer my DM’s. All of them. Want to know the percentage of DM’s I have received that were spam? I can’t honestly give you a percentage but I can tell you that in my entire history I have received 1. And as soon as I did I realized somehow, something had gone wrong. Twitter had allowed something through that shouldn’t have gotten through because if you don’t follow spam bots, you don’t get spam. In order to get a DM you have to be following a person. Don’t follow every ‘thing’ that follows and that will cut out that problem. 

One last thought before I go on to something else. I do not want a sob story about how you don’t have enough time to answer all your @replies or DM’s. I don’t want to hear about all the email you can’t get to because you created a mailing list and spam thousands of people, who then respond to you. Woe is me, in your case, should be WHOA is me. To quote a woman in my stream, “Stop the insanity!” If you would start behaving responsibly, taking relationships seriously, the problems you complain about would simply disappear.

So, as to the first part of my post and tying them together, I don’t care if I’m ranked or not. I don’t believe the numbers, any of them, really mean a thing except to the marketing divisions and board of directors writing the checks - bean counters.

I happen to know that one of the best writers out there sits next to me daily writing things the biggest part of the world will never see. What I care about is reaching out to people that matter, unless I’m selling something and so far, all I’m selling is real.

Real is a whole lot better than fake or contrived.

Those real people are the kind of people in my life and ’stream’. Who’s in yours?

This morning my attention got called to a post my my good friend Andy Abramson. I’m going to start by saying, I agree with the post…but…

Five Myths of VoIP According To SpeakEasy
Longtime business DSL and VoIP operator Speakeasy, now owned by BestBuy, has identified what they call the Five Myths of VoIP that prevent business from making the switch to VoIP:

I know you’re wondering why I said but…..

I absolutely agree with the points made by SpeakEasy that Andy sets out. But also, in the interest of fairness and a touch of reality thrown in for good measure, I’m going to play devil’s advocate and counter every one of them. I’ve been studying and writing books and papers about VoIP since 1999 or so, and I think I have a fair handle on the reality of this business.

1. It’s not really going to save much money- saves up to 45% over traditional services in some cases, not to mention costs of switching employee phone lines, which increase the average phone bill by about 30%.

The caveat…in some cases it saves as much as 45%. And in some cases the costs are greater than simply sticking with what you have. In most cases, it’s a real money saver. What’s overlooked by far too many businesses and VoIP providers is the hardest value proposition of all. VoIP enables business work flow process change. It streamlines a great deal of business activity, but quantifying that and putting a dollar value to it is very hard work. Too many people investigating VoIP don’t put the effort in that’s required to find this value. And too many VoIP providers simply don’t understand their potential customers’ business well enough to address it. Do the hard work and don’t be your own worst enemy.

2. It’s too much of a hassle to set up and manage – Hosted VoIP is as simple as setting up Internet service, and Integrated VoIP can plug right into existing equipment for those locked in a lease.

Sorry, but this is an oversimplification and generalization. Yes hosted VoIP is easy to set up. Yes integrated VoIP can plug right in. And yes, you can buy cheap vanilla ice cream (do they still make ice milk?) at the grocery store. Simplem instant setup doesn’t take your business needs into account. You have to balance simplicity with the needs of your business. Don’t shortcut yourself by going for the simplest approach. Talk to your provider and gain some confidence that they understand your business needs too. Your business is not a cookie. Don’t let the provider stamp out your VoIP service with a cookie cutter.

3. Call clarity is inferior to traditional phone quality – VoIP providers can optimize Internet bandwidth to ensure voice quality.

Key phrase that you should pay attention to - VoIP providers can optimize Internet bandwidth to ensure voice quality. Of course they can. Do they? How specifically do they? I’ve seen far too many disreputable providers assure customers they “can” do this, but those assurances have to translate to Service Level Agreement (SLA) line items with metrics and tangible proof they’re being delivered. Don’t accept your vendor canoptimize. Hold their feet to the fire and make sure they do. One of the best ways to do this is with SLA line items tied to money. If they fail to deliver and you’ve got an SLA with payment penalties for failures, you’ve got strong assurances they will deliver.

4. The technology is still too new – VoIP has been around since the mid 90s, and is trusted by millions of companies as their preferred source of communication.

There is simply no devil’s advocate position for this point. It’s a fact of technology and business. VoIP is solid, standard telecommunications infrastructure that delivers business class service supporting mission-critical operations worldwide.

5. VoIP is just a large business solution and is not necessary for small businesses – small businesses can achieve big business telecom functionality at a fraction of the cost with VoIP.

Can achieve is right. The potential is huge and the risk is small. But the smart business will always remember caveat emptor - let the buyer beware. Don’t be paranoid, but remember that your interest is in your business. The VoIP provider’s primary interest is in selling you service. Be reasonable, balanced, thoughtful and embrace the value and power you can achieve. Just don’t trust blindly. Check references. Know your vendor. Most are committed to delivering real value and more than happy to do demos, pilot test and provide reference customers.

And yes, a small business can easily be more professional, more efficient, more nimble and exponentially more competitive  than a large enterprise with the right integration of VoIP into the emerging communications enhanced business processes deploying today.

VoIP done right is a foundation cornerstone upon which you can build a winning solution for your business.

Today I received a package. An unexpected package. Ken was on a call and I answered the door in time to see the mail person scurrying away. I looked down and there was a tube. I picked it up and brought it in.

I looked at the postmark and it was clearly addressed to me. I didn’t immediately see a return address. Hmmm, I wasn’t expecting anything. I considered waiting until Ken got off the phone, but curiosity got the better of me and I started trying to get it open.

At first I struggled getting one end open. I finally got it and realized it was a picture of some sort, though I couldn’t tell of what.
After some thought I decided to go ahead and open the other end and that’s when I discovered who sent it.

Inside but wrapped around the actual picture was a note addressed to both Ken and I. A note from someone who has become a real supporter of both of us, someone we both really admire, and someone who has truly bridged the online versus real/life relationships that social media has made possible, even though we have never met him in real life. Just to be clear, I FOUND find him first!

Here’s what his note said:

And who wrote this note you ask? The Amazing artist, Lewis Evans. You may remember I did an interview with Lewis. not long ago. I hope this will provide you a reason to go have another listen. He is a brilliant man, not just artistically speaking, but is also the inventor of Lewis Evans Fibonacci Technqiue (LEFT), or LEFT Brain trading.

Yes, I’m going to share the beautiful picture Lewis did for me, but I want to make the point yet again, something I seem to find myself doing on a fairly regular basis these days, that online relationships are not as casual as they might appear to people who don’t truly engage in any. They are real. Lewis has absolutely impacted my life. So has his wife Olga, another truly brilliant person I have great respect for.

Recently we’ve seen a lot about a fellow tech geek who is going through a really difficult time, fighting, in essence for his life. Drew Olanoff, who I am talking about,  said earlier on twitter, “I Have the best friends. No really!” I know he was talking about some people who were physically in his presense, but I also know he could say the things I am and that is that the lines have blurred, our REAL life relationships are no longer offline only. Now our real life friends are online too. In other words, that we met online, are maybe exclusively online, has little to no bearing on whether it’s real. These are absolutely real.

Let me show you how real. Only real could capture this, knowing why it matters, and how accurate it is. I give you, The Lighthouse Keeper:

Thank you Lewis. You are truly a Great friend.

Today it was my pleasure to have as a guest one of the most amazing women in the twitter world. Jeanette Fisher reaches more people with her tweets than most people could hope for. No, she’s not famous in the same way as Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore who also have large followings, but she does create buzz, probably because she is such a successful author who has written tons of books and knows exactly what to do to market them and herself.

Jeanette is a fascinating woman who has thrived in spite of a rather difficult couple of years. She lost her daughter in 2005 and the following year her husband died leaving her a widow after a 30+ year relationship. That could have been a blow too hard for many people to overcome, but not Jeanette. She pulled herself together and started making her way on her own.

Joy To The Home is Jeanette’s place to start finding your own path to living harmoniously with your surroundings. For a more in depth view of Jeanette check our her Bamboo Women blog as well. This is where you get to know more about Jeanette and see what makes her tick.

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This afternoon I had the opportunity to speak with someone I met online. Louis Gray has built a Brand for himself out of his blogging skills, but his long list of elite connections/friends can attest to the ‘net savvy, articulate but well grounded man he really is.

Louis Gray is a young man with a wife and twins who doesn’t have an agenda and isn’t trying to sell anything. He simply puts forth a message that he believes in, researches new services and applications, and in general is a really nice guy.

Today, due to some rather distressing news on the web about Drew Olanoff, we took a little detour and made the chat more personal. Drew is a good friend of Louis and his wife Kristine, and has actually been the babysitter for them and their twins. Drew was recently diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkins Lymphoma.

Since 2006, I’ve utilized LouisGray.com as a platform to express my personal observations on the world of technology, the Web, and innovation. As a massive consumer of technology, living and participating in the heart of Silicon Valley, I have tried to deliver an unfiltered approach to the day’s trends and tools, one that opens eyes and is my viewpoint alone - not echoing what others have said, but instead, making people think - not just about what technology does today, but where it’s going.
Continue reading about Louis

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